Archive for Music Reviews and the Like

So I’m back from tour, and I’m back in Iceland after my extended California vacation. I sold out of my half of tapes, which was a good feeling. Kenneth is going to send me a handful more to have here in Iceland, but other than that if you want one order directly from Off Tempo.

One of the best parts of touring with a new cassette is tape trades! Here are my new tapes.

Sledding With Tigers / KIDS. split I got this when I played a show with Sledding With Tigers a couple months ago. Sledding With Tigers is a folk punk project led by a guy named Dan who is super friendly. The other side of the tape is another band from San Diego, KIDS., that was such a great discovery. Their sound is sort of reminiscent of late-90s/early-00s Moog-y indie bands like the Rentals, with a really healthy dosage of ’60s pop thrown in, lots of harmonies, super cool. I’ve been listening to all their stuff over and over again. They’re definitely one of my favorite bands in San Diego right now, so I was stoked to have them play with us at the tour kick-off show.

Mandarin Dynasty – Perpendicular Crosstalk This one I’ve also had for some months, since a show I played with them at the Park Gallery. I’d heard a CD-R of this last year while on tour and had been dying to get my own copy ever since. I was really impressed. It’s a cool tape of psych-pop singer-songwriter stuff, sort of in the vein of later Elliott Smith stuff, but a bit more upbeat. Really needs to be listened to in its entirety for the full effect.

LAKE – Avocado LAKE is such a cool band. They managed to sound totally smooth and groovy despite the difficult P.A. situation where we played with them in Santa Cruz.

Skrill Meadow – April Fools Day Skrill Meadow is Markly Morrison from LAKE’s project of weird country music that feels at home on the cassette tape.

Ethiopicks – Awesome Dance Hits from Ethiopia 1979-1989ish This is another tape I got from Markly Morrison. Sounds as advertised.

Antarctica Takes It! – Contellations I actually play a tiny bit of guitar on this album. It’s in the vein of bands like Camera Obscura and Belle & Sebastian, with a bits of 60s soul influence showing through. Antarctica Takes It isn’t playing any shows right now because Dylan is working on his comic book Burger Dude, but I stayed with him while up in the bay area.

Each Other – Taking Trips I’d planned to visit Big Sur during a day off on tour, but those plans fell through, so I stayed an extra day up in the bay area to catch my friend Erin’s band play a show. They were touring with a Canadian band called Each Other who totally knocked my socks off. This tape almost doesn’t do them justice, but it’s pretty damn cool nonetheless. It’s noisey super angular rock ala Women, with much of it riding on their tight vocal harmonies. It was amazing the sound they accomplished despite being just three people.

Also check out their 7″ single… it’s REALLY good.

Good Amount – Swimmer Christian Filardo is a dude who runs a net label called Holy Page Records that’s put out a couple compilations I’ve contributed to. He also does a band called Good Amount. I randomly met them in Santa Barbara, where they were also touring through. This is a nice ambient electronic music tape.

Stephen Steinbrink – I Drew a Picture I played a show with Stephen last year, and so I was excited to catch him play at the Che Cafe the day after my tour. Stephen is a “singer-songwriter” and home recorder who is a delicate master of his craft. As soon as you pop this one in Steven hits you with his super tight harmony singing, and it’s like bam this is awesome. This one sounds so cool. Some textures are reminiscent of French groovesters, Air. Other moments vaguely recall Satanic Panic-era Of Montreal. The warbly mellotrons and honkytonk pianos, the slap tape echo, punchy drums, and 80s-tinged production of tracks like To Be New Again all translate especially well on cassette tape.

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I think there’s also something to be said for actively engaging the music you’re listening to. With a cassette you pick it up and put it in a machine to listen to it, and half-way through you flip it over to continue. It takes deliberate effort. With a computer on the other hand, the listening process is so passive, especially if you’re using giant playlists or have your whole library on shuffle.

But I think the most interesting thing about cassette tapes is in the strengths and limitations of the medium. Ok, so maybe it’s mostly limitations. But it’s cool to see how people work with the frequency response and saturation characteristics and how the medium can become a part of the sound of the recording in a pleasing way.

All these tapes are super cool. The cassette-sound aesthetic of a few of them — especially I Drew A Picture and April Fools Day — has really inspired me. I’m taking notes! I look forward to doing another one.

We started Monsters From Mars in 2001, playing instrumental surf rock ala Dick Dale, the Ventures, the Bomboras, The Lively Ones, The Original Surfaris — stuff like that. Lots of spring reverb, tremelo picking, horror movie riffs, and exotic scales. After a little while I started mixing in garage rock influences. Paul, our drummer, brought in a cool progressive element. So we’re still a surf rock band, but it’s surf rock informed by Philip Glass, Goblin, Bobby Beausoleil.

Anyways, the other day I got around to uploading the rest of the still relevant recordings to the Bandcamp page.

Monsters From Mars has sort of been on hiatus recently since I’ve been everywhere except San Diego the past few years. But we’ve got a few shows lined up now. The next one is April Friday 13th at the Che Cafe.

It took me quite a while to get this project going. I’d been thinking about it and coming up with bits and pieces of songs for it for years, since probably around 2006, but couldn’t get anywhere with it. I’ve been in bunches of other bands and written and recorded boatloads of songs – it’s not like I’d never done this stuff before. I had a name, I had a vision for the style, I knew who I wanted to perform on the tracks. But for some reason – and I think this is quite common – I’d built the project up way too much in my head and was being too careful, holding it too precious. It seems silly now, but I was obsessing over debut albums from the likes of Dexys Midnight Runners and Chumbawamba, and somehow, messing around with guitars and a laptop in my bedroom was supposed to come up with something with passion and poignancy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and at that, first shot.

The reality of course is, that doesn’t happen. You don’t get good at anything without working on it. Those bands didn’t just appear out of nowhere with legendary debut albums. They were playing together in other bands and putting out singles for years. On top of that, those bands were bigger than the sum of their parts — the right people working together at the right time in the right environment.

Finally, in the beginning of 2010 I began to loosen up. Instead of trying to force every perfect note for the perfect set of perfect songs for the perfect album, I just started messing around with simpler, less grand ideas and seeing what came of it. Furthermore, I’d holed up in an apartment far away from pretty much anybody I knew. I disconnected from the internet. It was dark, and it was cold out. Can you imagine? All of a sudden I was being really productive, and in the span of a few months I’d recorded enough material for an album, The Dionysian Season — the name a tribute to growing up on the California coast, where there’s hardly any differentiation between summer or winter, where the perpetual overcast obscures the sun. It could be any time of year, any time of day.

In the time since I’ve gone back and forth on how I feel about the album. Was it the grand philosophical and socio-political statement I’d originally intended? Not at all. It has nice songs on it though – quite an eclectic mix, perhaps a bit hard to define, but all distinctly “me, 2010.” I poured a lot of ideas into it. It’s all a bit rough and lo-fi. There’s not even a bit of poetic pretense. The lyrics are very string of thought. Writing these songs was a sort of confessional therapy for me.

I’ve realized that the album unintentionally unfolds as a narrative of my life during this period. It starts out with a batch of songs that I started before leaving California, of dreams and enthusiastic high hopes. In “Strong Enough” I’m setting off, leaving my home and my friends to to grow, so I can return a better, stronger friend. “Heavensent” is a fantasy story of again, leaving home, but perhaps with a more confused notion of home. The Dionysian Season is a clumsy attempt of putting some philosophical ideology to song. It’s stiff, and I learned a lot about how not to write a song from this song no living up to what I’d hoped it would become. Then we hit the instrumental “Hraunbreida,” and for most of the rest of the songs I’m in Iceland. This recording is all just my voice and my parents’ old dog under lots of reverb. After this point in the process I loosen up and the songs are more fluid.

“Spell of Platonic Reversal” was just an experiment with sampling different things around my apartment, such as hitting piano strings with drumsticks, with lyrics alluding to Nietzsche’s critique on Plato’s “ideal.” “Friends Like a Changing Tide” is me struggling with a sense that there’s nothing lasting in the connections I make with people. Despite my efforts to maintain contact, most of my friends–and most particularly most of my best friends–from my life in California just completely and immediately disappeared from my life. This was such a blow. I was meeting new people, and there was one in particular I was maybe too excited about, and poof. It made me doubt the value of these experiences. “Your Organs Will Deteriorate” is another instrumental, and I think you can imagine a cycle of life to it. A simple theme is born and builds with drama, hits an arc and then develops in a different direction, but in the end dies back down to the simpler, childlike state.

“This Year I Decided” was actually a really old recording of Rachel Fannan and I improvising that I’d found somewhere on my hard drive and decided to extend it a little and layer-on the accompanying arrangement. “You Can Ride My Surfboard” is a song I recorded while living in Austin for a surf-themed compilation. I started by recording drums and then wrote a song to that. Originally it was going to have more movements, but I ran out of time before the deadline, so I cut it short. It’s decidedly not very serious. “Last Dance” is another instrumental, uses mostly samples of my voice circa 2003.

“Lovers Never Die” is a really pessimistic song written from the point of view of a girl disillusioned with love. “Crush in the Key of J” I thought often about leaving off the album due to the situation and people involved and how much of a fool I made of myself. Oh well, part of loosening up is to do things with no regrets. Musically I think it’s a really cool psych pop song and it fit with the direction I was developing in musically, so I kept it on the album. “Knowing More Than We’ve Ever Known” is an expression of the precautionary principle. It’s about the Large Hedron Collider, and how even though it’s perhaps unlikely that any of the tiny black holes they’re making would get out of control, is it really worth taking that risk? What has science given us? What has it taken? The ways science has changed human lifestyle and the face of the earth have nothing to do with its lofty ideals of human progress and the advancement of knowledge that it pays lips service to but rather everything to do with being in the pocket of industry and militarism. “Forget Everything I Have Said” is a half-hearted anti-love song.

So at some point I do grow. That part comes true — I grow as a musician, I challenge myself with a new environment and I meet it, and I see my past life with more perspective. But the enthusiasm curbed, the original vision derailed. I get a bit disillusioned. Do I go back to Santa Cruz and rejoin my friends? No. (It’s got a character arc, which is the hallmark of a real story.) You can never go back. You can go back to a place. But you can’t go back to a time or a feeling. This character picks up a different thread. (Stay tuned for the next album!)

It’s a weird batch of songs. But it was a step I needed to make. I found people to play these songs with. Over the process of recording and performing I’ve grown tremendously as a singer (I couldn’t really sing when I started the album) and songwriter. That type of stuff doesn’t happen without going through the motions, putting yourself out there.

I don’t know if it’s the state of music today or what, but not very many people have bought the album. On the other hand, critics gave it good reviews, and it was nominated for best newcomer in the Icelandic Music Awards. So even though stuff like that doesn’t go to my head, it’s nice as a sort of validation – that even if the general population is totally indifferent to my music, at least a handful of music nerds in special places appreciated it.

I’ve sometimes made the half-joke that I have trouble even giving away my music, let alone selling it. Anyways, the album is sitting on Bandcamp for your downloading pleasure. I’d appreciate if you donated $6 for the download, but don’t let that stop you, as it’ll still download if you enter $0 in the box.

One of my close friends, Tyler Martin, has a band called James Rabbit.

I met Tyler at UC Santa Cruz. We’d talk about music and bedroom recording and for a bit played together in a band called Nicky and His Dreamers. After college Tyler moved into an old, half-condemned house on Blackburn St nicknamed The Crystal Palace (after the sheets of glass our friend Jamie Burkart once lined it with). The talent pouring from that house was amazing. For a couple years I lived in the house and played with the band. It was one of the best times in my life. As much as I grow as a musician, the talent coming out of James Rabbit is always leagues ahead of me, always blowing my mind, always setting an impossible standard.

Since starting the band when he was a 16-year-old high school student in Fresno, CA he has released over 60 full-length, incredibly imaginative, weird, and catchy-as-all-hell indie-pop albums. Yes, over sixty. Are they all good? Well, many of them were released in such limited runs that they’re no longer available. But if you want to get a sense, you’re in luck because they just released their first greatest hits collection, entitled Express.

I started the busy Airwaves week a little early with a songwriting/recording session with the musicians that FBi Radio brought to Airwaves — Rainbow Chan and Oliver Tank. The photo to the left is of Rainbow Chan performing my great-grandpa’s mechanical calculator, which we used in the beat of the song. The three of us have quite disparate musical styles that were difficult to synthesize, especially within the span of an afternoon. But we’re also each individually going to do a remix of the track, which I think will bring out our different styles. I will post those when they are ready.

[…] mixes Brian Wilson with Ariel Pink and comes up with something truly compelling and original. Just Another Snake Cult’s sound pulls off that rare and peculiar trick of balancing the right influences with just enough originality to blow minds and capture hearts. We like this a lot.

KEXP Session at KEX Hostel (photo: Michael Matynka)

Our first show of the week was a live session for KEXP Seattle at KEX Hostel, where our “big group played an endearingly ramshackle set […] with just about any instrument you could find.” Check out more of the nice things they have to say and great photos on their blog. The stage sound was a little difficult (low resonances, feedback — stuff that comes with the territory of being a nine-person band), but the recording quality is fantastic. You can listen to our entire set at our KEXP session archive.

This was followed by a string of off-venue performances. At Barbara there was no backline at all, so we performed acoustic without Ási our drummer and had a great time of it. At Reykjavík Backpackers the mixer powering their sound system was on the fritz — it took half our set before we’d shook enough dust out of the thing that all the channels came through. But again, we had fun. At Kaffistofan the jerry-rigged P.A. didn’t look promising, but it held up and to our surprise the sound was great.

Amsterdam on-venue (photo: Magnús Andersen)

At this point we were looking forward to playing a real venue, with decent sound. The sound check at Amsterdam was a little disconcerting as a number of the power outlets on the stage were dead, they still needed to round up another D.I., and there wasn’t room for all of us actually on stage. Nonetheless, we managed to get a good sound. By the time we hit the stage that night though, all the mixing board settings from soundcheck had been tossed, one of the monitors was dead, nothing came through right, there weren’t enough working channels left on the board for the band, and between each song the sound guy ran up to tell us that something new had crapped out. We made the best of it. In their review, the Reykjavík Grapevine noted that we left “the audience to endure a 10-minute sound check,” but that then “the keyboard and guitar drove the North English sound along, with the saxophone laying down some fine grooves. Quite fitting music for a small venue like Amsterdam, and the crowd was more than happy to stomp along to it.” Stereogum has assured me that their scathing review of an unnamed Icelandic band was not directed towards us.

The Line of Best Fit (photo: Sébastien Dehesdin)

Sunday was the longest day — traveling around Reykjavík (and Mosfells) with a gang from La Blogothèque recording song after song for an extended Take Away Show. In between we fit in a cold and windy roof-top session for The Line of Best Fit. It was really fun working with them both. I can’t wait to see video from all three–La Blogotheque, The Line of Best Fit, and KEXP. Will post them as they come!

Our intensive schedule didn’t leave much time or energy for show-going (let alone that seeing many bands entails either waiting in a queue for an hour or showing up hours early and waiting inside the venue) and so I missed out on a lot of bands that I would have liked to have seen. Of what I saw, the highlight of the festival was Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. Her music (or specifically, her singing) is something that dares do something different. Was it good? I don’t know. But it burned itself onto my brain in a way music generally does not do. More music should strive to be so striking, and in such a human way. Couple that with like the coolest backing band ever — double-drummers (one of which was Greg Sonier of Deerhoof!), Sean Lennon, etc etc. It was pretty sweet. Tune-Yards even came on stage mid-set, which I have great footage of, but no steady internet connection to upload it. The Reykjavík Grapevine actually has a good review of this show, if you’re still curious.

Ok, the chaos has already insued. Wednesday was great! Will post the link to the KEXP archive stuff when I get the chance. Played an acoustic show at Barbara as well, which was totally off the hook. Tried to get into a couple on-venue shows but the queues were too long.

I don’t think I can give an overview of the foreign bands playing at Airwaves. Anyway, it’d be far more unbalanced and biased than my overview of the Icelandic bands. Instead I’ll just share with you what I’m going to do. Here’s my Thursday.

I’m going to see Kira Kira because I never have.

Then we’re heading over to Reykjavík Backpackers hostel and playing there (a little earlier than originally scheduled probably).

Then I’m going to bolt down to catch the Chimera Music acts at Harpa Norðurljós.

This show kicks off at 8PM with The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, which is a Sean Lennon psych-pop duo with a lady named Charlotte Kemp Muhl. Cooooool. I’ll probably miss this unfortunately.

They are followed by a band called Fig, which is a new project of Yuka C. Honda (Cibo Matto) and Nels Cline (Wilco). I don’t know more, but there’s a clip on their site that sounds cool. I’ll probably miss this as well.

Then comes Consortium Musicum at 10pm. This is what I most want to see at Airwaves this year. This is a noisy experimental duo between Greg Sonier (drummer of Deerhoof) and Sean Lennon. Bring your ear plugs. I’ll probably miss most if not all of this, unfortunately.

They’re followed by MI-GU, which is a band lead by the drummer from Cornelius and Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band.

Iceland Airwaves is around the corner. There’s an enourmous amount of bands playing, but you have only five days to catch what you can. On top of that, chances are you don’t even have any idea what you want to see most of the time, as there is so much new music, and who has time to keep up on that stuff anyway?

To help make some sense of it all I’ll attempt to introduce the acts I’m personally most interested in. I’ll start with the Icelandic bands since I’ve had the opportunity to see most of these already. I am in no way trying to be all-inclusive, this list is just based on what I am familiar with and appreciate.

On a side note, I personally recommend spending your days catching off-venue performances. It’s a lighter atmosphere — not pitch-black dark, not as loud (both the music and the roar of audience doing their best to be heard over it). It’s a nice excuse to walk around downtown in the daytime. And in most cases there won’t be long lines. My experience from last year was that if you’re trying to catch a more popular band at a venue like Nasa or Iðnó, if you’re not in by 10pm or so, you’re probably going to be waiting in a long line for a long time in the frosty rain. So if you were hoping you could hop from venue to venue to catch all your favorite bands, think again. Most of the off-venue schedule consists of Icelandic bands, so it may be wise to catch as many of them as you can off-venue.

Also, it is Icelandic tradition to stay at home and get boozed up and then show up to shows late. This is unfortunate as many of the best bands are playing early, and often the bands playing around midnight are way over-hyped.

Without further adue,

Let me start by mentioning that members of Just Another Snake Cult are also in Sudden Weather Change, Markús and the Diversion Sessions, and The Heavy Experience. All of these bands have been working on new material, and I can hardly wait to hear the finished products. It’s all looking to be very promising.

Fist Fokkers is some sort of punk/power violence duo that remind me of XBXRX. They are a testiment to the adage, sometimes big things come in little packages.

Thursday, 23:30 @ Amsterdam*

Gang Related is an alternative/beach pop band with loud guitars and fuzzed out bass. It may be freezing outside, but these guys will still be cranking out the summer jams.

Friday, 19:10 @ Amsterdam*

Hermigervill does some really cool retro electronic music stuff. His last two albums combine Icelandic classics (mostly oldies) with vintage synthesizers, and to great effect. To top it off, he plays theremin. Expect a really great vibe.

Mr Silla is members from a lot of Reykjavík bands (Múm, Seabear, Kimono, …) doing a sort of 90s girl-rocker thing.

Thursday 22:30 @ Amsterdam*

Mugison I’ve had an Icelandic friend describe as “cute blues,” which if that sounds meaningless just goes to show how useless the Icelandic concept of “krútt” is to people with foreign musical upbringings. Mugison is known abroad though, and for reason, he’s a great songwriter, singer, and performer.

Thursday, 17:00 @ KEX Hostel**
Friday, 21:40 @ Harpa Norðurljós*

Damn, only half-way through my list.

Ojba Rasta. If you’d told me two years ago I’d be digging a reggae band I’d have given you a skeptical look. What won me over is that here is a really tight band with catchy songs, fun energy, a live dub-master keeping the chaos in balance.

Wednesday, 00:00 Faktorý Main

Orphic Oxtra is a 13-person balkan folk inspired ensemble. They can be really fun.